A project to turn the 95-year-old former Young Women’s Christian Association in downtown Akron into 115 apartments will begin construction today, with the start of internal demolition at the building.
The CitiCenter conversion — which was originally expected to have residents moving in this year — will instead be completed in January 2028, said Tom Charek, the Welty Development president. Residents will live there beginning that spring, he said.
Welty bought the 10-story building at 146 S. High St. from the city, which had housed the fire chief and other offices in it. The sale price, which was originally supposed to be $1 million, was reduced to $769,210 because of water damage to plaster and other historic elements.
“We’re saving as much plaster and historic features in the building as possible,” Charek said. “This has been a challenging project. Historic renovations are always a challenging project.”
The $37 million redevelopment will help Akron with its goal to bring more residents downtown, said Christopher Hardesty, the executive director of the Downtown Akron Development Corp. He called it the “first domino to fall” in a string of conversion projects that together are expected to bring more than 600 apartments to downtown Akron.
The progress on CitiCenter, he said, shows that the other projects are doable.
“I do think there’s continued demand for residential in downtown Akron,” Hardesty said. “Residential really supports after-hours social activity. It helps build downtown and our case for more investment.”
The CitiCenter conversion, Mayor Shammas Malik said, is part of the city’s vision for the redevelopment of downtown.
“The overall goal is to increase the population in a way that creates critical mass,” Malik said. “We’re building downtown into more of a neighborhood.”
Other planned conversion projects, Hardesty said, include the Philadelphia Rubber Works building at 123 Bartges St., the second phase of the Goodrich project, the Akron Beacon Journal building and Huntington Tower. Quaker Square will also have apartments.
“None are purely theoretical,” Hardesty said. Of CitiCenter, he added, “We hope they open up, lease up, and it creates demand for other projects going forward.”
Public funding helped move CitiCenter project forward
The CitiCenter project will have 93 one-bedroom apartments, nine studio apartments, five two-bedroom apartments, five one-bedroom apartments with lofts and three one-bedroom apartments with dens. The average rent is expected to be $1,398 a month — what Charek called “an approachable number.”
As the project was delayed, he said, the architect worked to create more usable space in the apartments, eliminating hallways and creating a more efficient layout.
Welty also developed The Bowery project, which is nearby on South Main Street, and Charek said the residential buildings will share some amenities. Each will have a gym, but CitiCenter will have a dog park on the roof of the next-door parking garage and a rentable patio for events. The CitiCenter project is also expected to have incubator spaces for small businesses.
But there’s one piece of the project that’s still in flux. Welty CEO Donzell Taylor said previously that the old YWCA’s pool would be eliminated. Charek said that, for now, the sixth-floor space will be mothballed for future development once Welty knows more about what residents might want there and more money is available.
“The financials didn’t work yet, but we wanted the project to start,” he said of that space.
Charek said part of the delay in beginning construction was due to the financing of the project, which required local, state and federal money to move forward. Those grants included brownfield development money, without which, Charek said, the redevelopment would not have made sense.
Malik called such projects complicated, saying redevelopment into residential space isn’t easy.
Good projects eventually find funding, Charek said, but the public assistance is critical.
“This deal would not have happened without support,” Charek said. “This is a labor of love.”
Adding people downtown helps increase other development
Redevelopment projects often have “a lot of twists and turns,” Malik said. But he said that each one that opens helps show the pathway for more residential conversions to take place.
“I don’t think we’re close to having oversaturation of residential,” he said. “Maybe it will attract more interest from other developers who will give downtown a second look.”
That’s what Charek hopes for. The more people who live downtown, he said, the better it is for Akron. It means more visitors to the Akron Art Museum and the minor league RubberDucks baseball team, Hardesty said, as well as an increase in other nightlife.
With more residents, Charek said, more development “just keeps coming.”
“Selfishly for us, we think it’s going to rent up so quickly,” Charek said. “We’re doing it because we think there’s demand. … We hope this triggers more retail, more restaurants, more street level” development.
